The Song Of Achilles Quotes

I found myself grinning until my cheeks hurt, my scalp prickling till I thought it might lift off my head. My tongue ran away from me, giddy with freedom. This, and this, and this, I said to him. I did not have to fear that I spoke too much. I did not have to worry that I was too slender, or too slow. This and this and this! I taught him how to skip stones, and he taught me how to carve wood. I could feel every nerve in my body, every brush of air against my skin. ~ Madeline Miller

When he speaks at last, his voice is weary, and defeated. He doesn't know how to be angry with me, either. We are like damp wood that won't light. ~ Madeline Miller

Name one hero who was happy."
"You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
"I can't."
"I know. They never let you be famous AND happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret."
"Tell me." I loved it when he was like this.
"I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it."
"Why me?"
"Because you're the reason. Swear it."
"I swear it ~ Madeline Miller

This is how I think of us, when I remember our nights at Troy: Achilles and I beside each other, Phoinix smiling and Automedon stuttering through the punch lines of jokes, and Briseis with her secret eyes and quick, spilling laughter. ~ Madeline Miller

This was a man who moved like the gods were watching: every gesture he made was upright and correct. There was no one else it could be but Hector ~ Madeline Miller

We reached for each other, and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake loving him in silence. ~ Madeline Miller

We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both. ~ Madeline Miller

Later Achilles would play the lyre, as Chiron and I listened. My mother's lyre. He had brought it with him.
'I wish I had known,' I said, the first day when he showed it to me. 'I almost did not come, because I did not want to believe it.'
He smiled. 'Now I know how to make you follow me everywhere. ~ Madeline Miller

There was more to say, but for once we did not say it. There would be other times for speaking, tonight and tomorrow and all the days after that. He let go of my hand. ~ Madeline Miller

The rosy gleam of his lip, the fevered gleam of his eyes. There was not a line anywhere on his face, nothing creased or graying; all crisp. He was spring, golden and bright. Envious death would drink his blood, and grow young again. ~ Madeline Miller

When the song is over, she bows and I clap. I wonder how come she seems so brave. There is no part of her she hides. Lakeisha sits with me now on the bed and says,"Wanna hear a story?" I don't have to say yes before she tells me . ~ Heidi W. Durrow

I started as a drummer, so I sort of took on singing duties by default. I had sung backgrounds and some lead vocals from behind the drums in different bands that I'd been in, and I'd gotten great responses for the songs I would sing. I really started pursuing the possibility of being a lead singer based on the fact that I was working a full-time restaurant job and then playing gigs at night, hauling drums around. One day, it just dawned on me that, 'Hey, I could be in a band and be the singer, and it would be a lot easier!' ~ Chris Cornell

God's Fool

If loving God, celebrating God, loving life, being a servant, loving my neighbor is foolish then let me be a fool.

If loving God, celebrating God though art, poetry, song & dance is a fools game then let me be a fool.

If trusting Jesus is a foolish waste of time and energy then let it be known by one and all I shall waste everyday every dollar I shall waste time and eternity celebrating Jesus the one who loves and delights in me. ~ Charles W. Warner

All I ever wanted to do was take charge of what people were saying online and, sure, maybe make them feel a little bad about it. I never meant for my threat to truly be a swan song – just a loud note to catch some attention. But the whole mess had taken on a rhythm of its own, and it seemed like I was the only one who couldn't keep the beat. I was playing along with no idea how this tune was supposed to end. ~ Erin Lange

Megga couldn't sing, but she was mad to be kissed. She and Alla played a kissing game sometimes, she confessed, but it wasn't the same as kissing a man, much less a king. Sansa wondered what Megga would think about kissing the Hound, as she had. He'd come to her the night of the battle stinking of wine and blood. He kissed me and threatened to kill me, and made me sing him a song. ~ George R R Martin

I would start seeing, in just the sense I was saying now, the kind of record it was going to be and what the arrangement demands, and what my vocal part should be in the record. This was all emerging as the song was emerging. ~ Art Garfunkel

Also in the boom of the big bell there is a quaintness of tone which wakens feelings, so strangely far-away from all the nineteenth-century part of me, that the faint blind stirrings of them make me afraid, - deliciously afraid. never do I hear that billowing peal but I become aware of a striving and a fluttering in the abyssal part of my ghost, - a sensation as of memories struggling to reach the light beyond the obscurations of a million million deaths and births. I hope to remain within hearing of that bell ... and, considering the possibility of being doomed to the state of a jiki-ketsu-geki, I want to have my chance of being reborn in some bamboo flower-cup, or mizutame, whence I might issue softly, singing my thin and pungent song, to bite some people that I know. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

'All Over Me' is a song that I really got fired up the first time I heard it: it just really moved and it really had a lot of energy. ~ Josh Turner

You ought to use a little of that siren song on Alan, my pearl. The boy needs to loosen his cravat. ~ Jaclyn Dolamore

What it is
is the memory of a dance
a song you heard long ago
to hear it is to be young again
and for once
for once you are happy ~ Julio Alexi Genao

The universe corresponds to the nature of your song. ~ Michael Beckwith

Paul Simon once said that a songwriter's supreme challenge was being complex and simple at the same time-writing songs with lasting depth that are also simple enough to be memorable. Jimmy Van Heusen was a master at this kind of song. His music was complex, with deeply rich chord changes any jazzman can embrace, but also possessed catchy, crystalline melodies of exceeding sing-ability. His songs were meant to be sung, not just listened to, and they were sung by the best, with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby at the top of that list. ~ Paul Zollo

No, there's something about the sing-song cadence of children's music that has its place in rock. ~ Dave Grohl

a spider and a fly

i heard a spider
and a fly arguing
wait said the fly
do not eat me
i serve a great purpose
in the world

you will have to
show me said the spider

i scurry around
gutters and sewers
and garbage cans
said the fly and gather
up the germs of
typhoid influenza
and pneumonia on my feet
and wings
then i carry these germs
into households of men
and give them diseases
all the people who
have lived the right
sort of life recover
from the diseases
and the old soaks who
have weakened their systems
with liquor and iniquity
succumb it is my mission
to help rid the world
of these wicked persons
i am a vessel of righteousness
scattering seeds of justice
and serving the noblest uses

it is true said the spider
that you are more
useful in a plodding
material sort of way
than i am but i do not
serve the utilitarian deities
i serve the gods of beauty
look at the gossamer webs
i weave they float in the sun
like filaments of song
if you get what i mean
i do not work at anything
i play all the time
i am busy with the stuff
of enchantment and the materials
of fairyland my works
transcend utility
i am the artist
a creator and demi god
it is ridiculous to suppose
that i should be denied
the food ~ Don Marquis

The boys in the office preferred Daft Punk and the song "Robot Rock" as an anthem, speaking excitedly and without irony about wanting to become robots one day. That made me wonder: Why? What's the pull of being a robot? ~ Katherine Losse

I watched him playing with the long blades of grass, weaving them into patterns as he hummed an unfamiliar song, a waltz.
"What are you doing?" I asked him.
"I'm letting you get used to the idea of me," he said idly. "I'm pretending to be harmless. Is it working?"
"Until you smile," ( ... ) ~ Delilah S. Dawson

If heartaches and tears and shadows of doubt are part of the deal
you can count me out
but if your talking about a game I can win
You can count me in ~ Deana Carter

Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared? Ah, where have they gone, the amblers of yesteryear? Where have they gone, those loafing heroes of folk song, those vagabonds who roam from one mill to another and bed down under the stars? ~ Milan Kundera

Okay, I know--my superpower--I'd be able to shoot lightening bolts out from my fingertips--great big knowledge network lightening bolts--and when a person was zapped by one of those bolts, they'd fall down on their knees and once on their knees, they'd be under water, in this place I saw once off the east coast of the Bahamas, a place where a billion electric blue fish swam up to me and made me a part of their school--and then they'd be up in the air, up in Manhattan, above the World Trade Center, with a flock of pigeons, flying amid the skyscrapers, and then--then what? And then they'd go blind, and then they'd be taken away--they'd feel homesick--more homesick than they'd felt in their entire life--so homesick they were throwing up--and they'd be abandoned, I don't know...in the middle of a harvested corn field in Missouri. And then they'd be able to see again, and from the edges of the field people would appear--everybody they'd known--and they'd be carrying Black Forest cakes and burning tiki lamps and boom boxes playing the same song, and they sky would turn into a sunset, the way it does in Walt Disney brochure, and the person I zapped would never be alone or isolated again. ~ Douglas Coupland

I'm one of the undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he's up agen middle class morality all the time. If there's anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it's always the same story: "You're undeserving; so you can't have it." Buy my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don't need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don't eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause I'm a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything. ~ George Bernard Shaw

My concept of successful living is escaping the matrix, as we've talked about. It has very little to do with what people think success is. I actually feel successful right now, even though I don't have an album out, or a video or a song on the radio, because I'm trying to be obedient to His will. ~ Lauryn Hill

Measure a man by his actions fully from the beginning to the end. Don't take a piece out of my life or a song out of my music and say this is what I'm about because you know better than that. ~ Tupac Shakur

He sang the song of the sword, keening as he fed his blade, and Rollo, standing thigh-deep in the creek, ax swinging in murderous blows, blocked the enemy's escape. The Frisians, transported from confidence to bowel-loosening fear, began to drop their weapons. ~ Bernard Cornwell

I've never written a song that's hopeless. I'm not a hopeless person. I'm crazily optimistic. I crazily see the good in people. - singer Michael Stipe of R.E.M. Focusing on the tiniest details, finding magic in even the smallest inspirations, embracing the briefest moments-that's where passion is. ~ Linda Kaplan Thaler

It is indeed a song of steps. And as I have often said to you, these steps are not made to descend but to ascend. The questioner wishes then to ascend; and where does he wish to ascend if not to heaven? What does this mean - to ascend to heaven? Does he wish to ascend so as to be in the heavens with the sun, the moon, and the stars? Far from that! But there is in heaven an eternal Jerusalem where the angels, our co-citizens, are. From these co-citizens we on earth are estranged. In this exile we sigh; in the city we shall have joy. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

I got the Eye of the Tiger
The Fire
Dancing through the fire
Cause I am a Champion!
And your gonna hear me Roar
-Roar ~ Katy Perry

When The Lamp Is Shattered

When the lamp is shattered,
The light in the dust lies dead;
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow's glory is shed;
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.


As music and splendor
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute:--
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman's knell.

When hearts have once mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possessed.
O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier?

Its passions will rock thee,
As the storms rock the ravens on high;
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.
When The Lamp Is Shattered ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Does this popcorn taste burnt to you?" Miles asked, chewing loudly.
"Don't eat that," Roland said, plucking the popcorn from Miles's palm. "Arriane got it out of the trash after Luce set the dorm room kitchen on fire."
Miles began spitting frantically, leaning over the edge of Roland's wings.
"It was my way of connecting with Luce." Arriane shrugged. "But here, if you must, have some Milk Duds."
"Is it weird that we're watching the two of them like a movie?" Shelby asked. "We should imagine them like a novel, or a poem, or a song. Sometimes I feel oppressed by how reductive the filmic medium is."
"Hey. Roland didn't have to fly you out here, Nephilim. So don't act smart, just watch. Look." Arriane clapped. "He's totally staring at her hair. I bet he goes home and sketches it tonight. How cuuute!"
"Arriane, you got way too good at being a teenager," Roland said. "How long are we going to watch for? I mean, don't you think they've earned a little privacy?"
"He's right," Arriane said. "We have other things on our celestial plates. Like..." Her smirk faded when she couldn't seem to think of anything. ~ Lauren Kate

Once you've been on tour six, seven years, you get an idea of what works and what doesn't work universally. There will be some crowds that we just can't play a song, but we've got 90% of a show that we know is going to be a hit with the Lupe Fiasco fan. I think the catering has already been done. ~ Lupe Fiasco

Here we are, practitioners of memos: We send e-mail and we receive it, We copy it and forward it and save it and delete it. We write to move the data, and organize the program, and keep people informed - and know and control and manage. We write and receive one-dimensional memos, that are, at best, clear and unambiguous. And then - in breathtaking ways - you summon us to song. ~ Walter Brueggemann

In the involved and complicated business of politics, it is difficult to say who the puppeteer is and who the puppet, particularly when one is often both.... ~ Poile Sengupta

It is as if the moon and the trees have switched places. The sky is plunged into the heavy cloud-lidded darkness that seems to come every night, but in the valley below, the trees - or the places between the trees, it is impossible to tell the source - are fully lit, glowing. The woods are alight like an ember, bluish white and cradled by the rolling hills. It's like a beacon, I think with a chill. So this is what happens when the world goes black. The forest steals the light from the sky. Cole straightens beside me, taking ragged breaths. I cannot stop staring at the glowing trees. It is strange and magical. Almost lovely. The wind song has become simply a song, clear and articulate, as if made by an instrument instead of the air. It is all a perfect dream. ~ Victoria Schwab

I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. ~ Jack Kerouac